Toy Fair News: At Toy Fair Cryptozoic Entertainment unveiled two new games based on AMC’s hit TV series The Walking Dead including a new full size board game tentatively titled The Walking Dead: Road to the Prison Board Game (MSRP $40.00), which is due out in September.  The Road to the Prison game is a completely new game, a cooperative rather than competitive game that deals with the events from Seasons 2 and 3 of the highly rated cable series.  As Cryptozoic COO Scott Gaeta told ICv2, "The new game is not an expansion to our original Walking Dead board game.  It’s a totally separate game with all new game play."  Cryptozoic’s first Walking Dead board game has been a huge hit with sales of over 100,000 units (see "100,000 'Walking Dead' Games").

 

The first of Cryptozoic’s new Walking Dead games to hit the market won’t be the board game however, it will be The Walking Dead Card Game (MSRP $15.00), which is due in April.  Designed by Wolfgang Kramer, who has won numerous Spiel des Jahres awards, the new Walking Dead Card Game uses a version of the point-scoring mechanic that Kramer designed for the Deutscher Spiele Preis-winning 6 Nimmt, which Gaeta told ICv2, "is a perfect fit, because The Walking Dead Card Game is basically all about scoring points. In the game you play one of the heroes from the show and you kill zombies to score points."

 

The innovative Walking Dead Card Game can accommodate 2-6 players (ages 15 and up) in "Hero" mode, and up to 10 players in the party game-friendly "Survivor" mode.

 

With ratings for The Walking Dead TV series at all time highs (see "'Walking Dead' Midseason Premiere Sets Ratings Records") and Walking Dead graphic novel collections topping sales in both the direct and bookstore markets, it’s no surprise that merchandising for the series is very robust.  In addition to its games Cryptozoic has The Walking Dead Trading Cards (a Season 2 card set is due out this spring, see "'The Walking Dead Season 2 Trading Cards'"), and Alliance and Diamond just announced exclusive The Walking Dead-themed editions of Monopoly and Risk are due next fall (see "Diamond & Alliance Have 'Monopoly: The Walking Dead Survival Edition' Exclusive").